Valerie Plame

We need a worldwide public movement to make Global Zero an urgent global imperative — and to bring all nuclear weapons countries to the table to negotiate multilateral nuclear arms reductions for the first time in history

Without doubt, terrorist groups are trying to buy, build or steal a bomb. Furthermore, there is enough highly-enriched uranium (HEU) in the world to build more than 100,000 weapons, and rogue individuals are selling technology on the black market. If terrorists get hold of HEU, they could not be prevented from smuggling it into a targeted city, building a bomb and exploding it.To my mind, the only realistic solution to this danger is to lock down all nuclear materials and eliminate all nuclear weapons in all countries: Global Zero. I am now dedicated to achieving this goal as a leader of the Global Zero movement. This movement was launched in December 2008 in Paris by an international group of 100 current and former heads-of-state, national security officials, military commanders and business, civic and faith leaders — and in just two years has grown to 300 leaders and 400,000 citizens worldwide.The group believes that whatever deterrent value nuclear weapons had in the Cold War is now outweighed by the dangers of proliferation and nuclear terrorism. Our international Global Zero Commission has developed a practical, step-by-step plan to eliminate all nuclear weapons through phased and verified reductions.To build on the progress made to date, we need a worldwide public movement to make Global Zero an urgent global imperative — and to bring all nuclear weapons countries to the table to negotiate multilateral nuclear arms reductions for the first time in history.

This situation has been very hard on her, professionally and personally … Not only have you removed from the playing field a very knowledgeable counterproliferation officer at a time when we really need her services, but before this she was on a fast track as a candidate for senior management at the agency. With something like this, her career will never recover.

I had allowed myself to be deceived into unknowingly passing along a falsehood. It would ultimately prove fatal to my ability to serve the President effectively. I didn't learn that what I'd said was untrue until the media began to figure it out almost two years later. ... Neither, I believe, did President Bush. He too had been deceived, and therefore became unwittingly involved in deceiving me. But the top White House officials who know the truth — including Rove, Libby, and possibly Vice President Cheney — allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie.

I do not believe that the President was in any way directly involved in the leaking of her identity, but that was a very disillusioning moment for me when I found out when it initially hit the press, and I was in North Carolina, if I remember correctly, and a reporter shouted out to the President, "Is it true that you authorized the secret leaking of this classified information?" We walked onto Air Force One, and the President asks, "What was the reporter asking?", and I said, "He asserted that you were the one who authorized Scooter Libby leaking this information," and he said, "Yeah, I did."

Scott McClellan on the leaking of Plame's identity, "Countdown," MSNBC (29 May 2008)

For nearly two years, the investigation into the leak of a covert C.I.A. officer's name has unfolded clamorously in the nation's capital, with partisan brawling on talk shows, prosecutors interviewing President Bush and top White House officials, and the imminent prospect that reporters could go to jail for contempt of court.But the woman at the center of it all, Valerie E. Wilson, has kept her silence, showing the discipline and discretion that colleagues say made her a good spy.

Former C.I.A. officers differ on the impact of Mr. Novak's identification of Ms. Wilson, who had been working against weapons proliferation in Europe and elsewhere while posing as an analyst for a shell company in Boston, Brewster Jennings & Associates, set up by the agency.Clandestine service officers working under such "nonofficial cover" — rather than the traditional guise of diplomat — are considered to hold the most sensitive and vulnerable jobs in intelligence, lacking the protection of diplomatic immunity if they are unmasked overseas.

Scott Shane, in "Private Spy and Public Spouse Live at Center of Leak Case" in The New York Times (5 July 2007)

Before this whole affair, no one would ever have thought of her as an undercover agent … She wasn't mysterious … She was sort of a working soccer mom.

David Tillotson, a next-door neighbor, as quoted in "Private Spy and Public Spouse Live at Center of Leak Case" by Scott Shane in The New York Times (5 July 2007)